Page 50 of Thornlight

Around Cub’s neck, the hand of cursed magic, the hand ofelse, changed.

It felt younger, now. Less mean, but more afraid, which Cub thought might be even more dangerous.

He clung to the wall of the Break, searching the air for clues with his cottage-sized nose.

“Hello?” Cub called out. He hadn’t spoken for so long that the word scraped his tongue raw.

Hello, Gulgot,hissed the else-hand, tightening. Its voice was stronger than it had been before. Fresh, and new—a crawlingcreature stretching its waking-up legs all across Cub’s body.

Then the else-hand yanked hard, and Cub fell.

He fell so many times that his skull cracked and swelled.

He fought the else-hand so hard that sores opened on his neck.

He clawed so desperately at the walls of the Break, trying to fight the else-hand’s pull, that his blisters burst.

He huddled on a rocky ledge, licking his paws, and slipped into a black and shifting sleep.

Never before had Cub’s dreams been so angry.

He had dreamed of his mothers before, and of the day the Vale split. He had dreamed of witches falling into the Break by the hundreds—not witches trapped in lightning, but real flesh-and-blood witches—and of him doing nothing to help them.

He had even dreamed of plowing mountains flat, uprooting forests, running across the sea beds until the waves far above came to a seething boil.

But he had never dreamed of this:

Heaving those toppled mountains into cities full of humans.

Flinging those uprooted trees into bellies and skulls.

Plucking warm bodies from their homes and markets and caves, and tossing them one by one into the sea.

Making sure the waves swallowed them.

Making sure the silt of the oceans dragged them down and buried them.

Of these dark things, Cub had never before dreamed.

Until now—with the one called Queenie living in the hand at his throat.

The hand’s wicked witch-magic was too much for one small human body to bear. Cub could feel that clearly. Queenie was no witch with Old Wild in her blood. Inside her, the magic grew darker. It boiled in her body and through the cursed else-hand, all the way down to Cub, alone in the dark, where it burned his bones like fire.

When next he woke, Cub thought one word:

Enough.

He roared it. “Enough!”

This time, when the else-hand pulled, Cub kept climbing. He shook the walls of the Break as he ran, carved canyons into the rock with his claws.

From above came three arcing bolts of lightning.

Cub knocked them aside, uncaring of the charred burns they left on his hide.

He heard the screams of the witches trapped inside the bolts, and he grinned an awful beastly grin.

“Enough,” he repeated, crawling faster now.

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